Asbestos Removal Laundry Renovation Hobart: What You Need to Know

Why Asbestos is Common in Hobart Homes Built Before 1990

Tasmania went through a massive building boom from the 1950s right through to the late 1980s, and asbestos cement products were just what builders used back then. Cheap, easy to work with, fireproof, and it held up well against the damp Hobart weather. Builders didn’t know any better, and honestly nobody was hiding anything from you, it was just standard practice.

If your house was built or renovated anywhere before 1990, there’s a real good chance asbestos got used somewhere in it. Laundries especially, because they’re wet areas and asbestos cement sheeting was brilliant for handling moisture without rotting or warping like timber does.

A few things that make Hobart homes particularly likely candidates:

• Older suburbs like Glenorchy, Lenah Valley, and parts of Sandy Bay have loads of housing stock from this exact era
• Many homes had “renovations” done in the 70s and 80s that added even more asbestos products on top of what was already there
• DIY culture in Tasmania means a lot of amateur laundry updates over the decades, sometimes covering old asbestos rather than removing it
• Weatherboard cottages often used asbestos cement sheeting as internal wall lining because it was cheap and available

None of this means your laundry definitely has it. Plenty of homes from this period don’t, or only have it in one spot. But if your place fits that age bracket, we’re always going to check before we start pulling things apart.

Asbestos Removal Costs in Hobart: What to Budget

This is the question everyone actually wants answered, and the honest answer is it depends on how much there is and where it’s located. But here’s a rough guide so you’re not going in blind.

• Small removal jobs (a single wall or floor section) typically run somewhere between $800 and $2,000
• Larger jobs (full laundry strip out with walls, floor, and ceiling all affected) can land anywhere from $2,500 to $6,000
• Testing alone, if you just want peace of mind before starting, usually costs a few hundred dollars for a sample or two

A few things push the price up or down:

• How much material needs removing, obviously more sheeting means more labour and disposal fees
• Whether it’s in good condition (bonded, non-friable) or damaged and crumbling (friable), which needs far more careful and expensive handling
• Access difficulties, tight laundries with awkward access cost more to work in safely
• Disposal fees, which have crept up over the years as landfill sites get stricter

We’ll never spring a surprise asbestos bill on you halfway through. If testing comes back positive, we stop, tell you the cost, and you decide how you want to proceed before we spend a cent of your money.

Timeline Impact: How Asbestos Discovery Affects Your Project

Finding asbestos will add time to your project, there’s no getting around that, but it’s usually not the massive setback people fear. Testing alone adds a few days while samples go to the lab. If it comes back positive, add another few days to a week for the licensed removalist to schedule in, do the work, and get the clearance certificate sorted.

So on a typical laundry job, you’re looking at maybe one to two extra weeks total, not months. We build a bit of buffer into our quotes for older homes anyway, precisely because this comes up so often. What actually blows out timelines is homeowners who get the news, panic, and want to shop around for second and third opinions before deciding what to do. Fair enough if you want to, just know that every week spent deciding is a week your laundry sits half finished.

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Daniel Whitfield

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